A peripatetic summer yielded this Financial Times essay earlier this month on outdoor shows. I noticed an ideological split among the presenting organizations: The free outdoor shows peppering New York and and the outer boroughs each summer always have their separate agendas but this year a stark divide emerged. On one side was the community-building event, in neighbourhood parks from … [Read more...]

For the Financial Times, I took my annual train trip up to remote Jacob's Pillow last month, in which, middle-aged bones creaking in the rain, I was struck by what a spring chicken I am:Jacob's Pillow has long been an outpost of forward thinking. Before the idea of "cultural diversity" existed, founder Ted Shawn was inviting Indian classical dancer Ram Gopal and pioneering black ballerina Janet … [Read more...]

From my Financial Times review of the Tao Dance Theatre, at Lincoln Center Festival last week--one of the few modern dance companies from mainland China, and extraordinary: China came late to modern dance - and nothing is as deadly as a recent convert's earnest faith. So when the programme declared that Beijing choreographer Ye Tao, of the five-year-old Tao Dance Theater, "eschews … [Read more...]

Apollinaire Scherr

is the New York-based dance critic for the Financial Times. She has written regularly for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Newsday, as well as SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, in the Bay Area. She has contributed to... Read More…

Foot in Mouth

This blog's concern is the tricky business of recognizing dance's peculiar language and history … [Read More...]